Active Worlds

Basics

Publisher: The Activeworlds Corporation.

General Description: In Activeworlds, players can create their own virtual homes, and visit the homes of other users. Hundreds of thousands of users inhabit over 1,000 unique worlds. While in Activeworlds, players can communicate with other users around the world. Various fees for worlds, etc. Players can build homes, shop, chat, and create their own avatars. Advertising is available as well

Price: Simple user account is free, "citizenship" costs $6.95 a month.

Number of Users (active users, average usage rate): Two million users claimed, including licensees in over 250 school and universities, and “many Fortune 500 organizations.

Installed base of assets (some measure of the assets already built for the system that could be purchased or otherwise acquired for use in an educational applications – e.g. buildings, equipment): There is an Activeworlds Educational Universe (http://www.activeworlds.com/edu/awedu.asp).

Existing levels of adoption by educational, government and corporate organizations: Over 100 educational institutions, in the U.S. and other countries, use Activeworlds. See this link: http://www.activeworlds.com/edu/awedu_participants.asp

Additional compatibility questions - to what extent can the environment be accessed through mobile devices? Unknown

Can the environment be accessed through the client side without the backend server (i.e. without a connection)? No.

Primary purpose - gaming, educational, design: General entertainment and education.

Size of the developers community: Unknown, but it appears to be fairly healthy. Activeworlds attempts to offer a fair amount of support to those who wish to develop content for the product.

URL: http://www.activeworlds.com/

Related Links

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Legal & Management

Open source? No.

IP management (who owns the software created): Users may create and sell objects and even games; Activeworlds Corporation owns software.

Privacy (tools for protecting personal data, rules on collecting information about behavior in the site): Users have a variety of privacy options that they can customize to their personal needs. These options, however, only affect other Activeworlds users -- it is not clear what information the corporation gathers or how it is used.

Management of cash assets:

• Does it manage micro-payments?

• Conversion of virtual cash to real cash:

Management of abusive behavior: Abusive behavior can be reported, but Activeworlds does not appear to have in-world moderators.

Access

• Entry (are fees charged, personal information required?): Entry is free for "tourists," who wish to sightsee and chat. Monthly membership for "citizens" is $6.95.

• Ability to control access to specific sites (are there different levels of permission for visitors, authors, etc.?): Yes.

Age restrictions: Adult content is restricted; it is not clear there are age restrictions per se.

Rules for blocking access to disruptive participants: Disruptive citizens can be banned.

Functionality

Graphics quality (polygons/page, frames/sec., latency for complex scenes, etc.):

Complexity of objects:

• AI characters (human and otherwise):

• Equipment (vehicles, laboratory equipment, etc.):

• Buildings and landscapes:

• Ability to support complex 3D structures such as a virtual human body: Not to the level of the insides of a human body.

• Physics-based?

Quality of interface tools (how easy is it to navigate, pick up and rotate objects, operate equipment?):

Ease of authoring (quality of graphics authoring, ease of writing scripts for AI):

Number of users and/or animated characters per scene (measure of speed vs. complexity?): 0-50; set by individual users depending upon their own preferences.

Reliability (crash resistance):

Stability (how often is the system patched/upgraded, are major changes planned, are user assets stranded when upgrades occur, is the system likely to be rendered obsolete by new operating systems, etc.):

Scalability: Can it be expanded to large numbers of users, how does it handle dynamic load balancing?

Compatibility: what kinds of user machines can be used (multi-platform?, connection requirements, works through firewalls?): Minimum requirements are a Pentium II CPU 300Mhz or equivalent, 64MB RAM Memory Microsoft Windows (98, Me, NT4, 2000, or XP), DirectX? 8.1 or later, Windows Media Player 6.4 or later, D3D? video card with at least 8MB and the latest drivers.

Multiple instances: If a virtual site is created (e.g., a city) can separate instances be created for each user community or do all groups have to share the same instance? Separate instances can be created.

Search capability (in-world): You can search for other users who are in-world.

Security: protection against hacking, identity theft, theft of IP assets:

Ease of input/output:

• Conversion to and from standard CAD:

• Ease of linking external simulations to the virtual world displayed in the system (e.g. can AI for characters be provided through an external system?):

Technical

Engine/languages used:

Dynamic load balancing:

Messaging protocols:

Multiple threading: